Drawing Feature Manager Design Tree Useless?

[madbrad]

I'll preface with the fact that I worked in Creo for years before coming back to Solidworks, and one of the differences I'm noticing is that the design tree in a drawing doesn't really help manage any annotations...
My design tree shows a folder for blocks, a folder for annotations (which is empty unless I pull in model annotations, which we don't use here), and then each sheet shows the drawing views and what model/assembly is in each drawing view. What I wish I could see are all of the notes and annotations that I've manually added to the drawing. In creo, each sheet in the drawing tree showed drawing views and then any annotations connected to each view as well as every annotation that wasn't connected to a view. Is there a way to see something similar to this in solidworks?
Each drawing sheet has many notes on it and it would be nice to be able to see all of those laid out.
I already went into the design tree properties and enabled all items to be shown, but it still displays nothing but the drawing views.

[Dwight]

You are right, if you select a any note in the graphics window, the location is not shown in the feature tree. If it's a note in a view, the view border lights up. If it's a note on the sheet, nothing is shown.

A not completely bad option is to hide all the views.

Dwight

[DanPihlaja]

It isn't useless, however it is useless for that specific use. That is a great idea though, would love to see all notes and such show up in the tree.

one of the uses for the tree is to select and deselect different parts and assemblies and change visibility of them.

[josh]

What sort of functionality/actions/behavior would you expect from listing up annotations in the feature tree? It would not be difficult to write something or other macro-wise to find/list/etc notes and annotations, I'm just trying to imagine what workflow would be improved by picking them from the feature tree rather than just picking them in the graphics area. I've never used Creo, so I suppose I don't know what I'm missing. If you have a certain workflow in mind, it might be possible to recreate.

[Frederick_Law]

What sort of functionality/actions/behavior would you expect from listing up annotations in the feature tree?

Lots of time notes are not connected to a view, or wrong view.
If user didn't drop the note/text inside a view, it's not connected.
You won't notice until a view is moved.

On drawing with lots of notes, architecture/plant layout, a list would help alot on finding note.

I've seen part with notes for a book

[josh]

Sooo... Would that be just for notes? If not, what other annotations would be included?

[josh]

See if this macro helps with your workflow... Please note that it's not super debugged. But you can browse and edit notes anywhere in the drawing without actually activating the sheet. The Property Linked Text box shows you the full actual text that is stored in the note, along with any formatting/bullets/symbols/etc. Using “Replace PropertyLinkedText” will update the note with the content in the box. Be sure to preserve any link text or formatting info (stuff inside “< >”) or the note will actually look different. You can also play around with the SWML and learn about how it works. It’s pretty much undocumented.

Edit: I just updated the function to update the selection boxes on the left when using the "Get Selected Note" button so that you can see the owner of any note.

Edit2:
Ok… One more edit. You can edit any note on any sheet at any time, including notes on the sheet format.
Picking a note in the User Form will select that note in the graphics area if that note is on the currently active sheet.
Balloons are technically notes, so you can choose whether or not to include them in the list.
The “Notes” box has a short preview of the content of the note so you can more easily find specific content.
The Object ID for the selected note is reported.
What else do you want to do?

[DanPihlaja]

See if this macro helps with your workflow... Please note that it's not super debugged. But you can browse and edit notes anywhere in the drawing without actually activating the sheet. The Property Linked Text box shows you the full actual text that is stored in the note, along with any formatting/bullets/symbols/etc. Using “Replace PropertyLinkedText” will update the note with the content in the box. Be sure to preserve any link text or formatting info (stuff inside “< >”) or the note will actually look different. You can also play around with the SWML and learn about how it works. It’s pretty much undocumented.

Edit: I just updated the function to update the selection boxes on the left when using the "Get Selected Note" button so that you can see the owner of any note.

Edit2:
Ok… One more edit. You can edit any note on any sheet at any time, including notes on the sheet format.
Picking a note in the User Form will select that note in the graphics area if that note is on the currently active sheet.
Balloons are technically notes, so you can choose whether or not to include them in the list.
The “Notes” box has a short preview of the content of the note so you can more easily find specific content.
The Object ID for the selected note is reported.
What else do you want to do?

Going through old posts and just wanted to point out how much of a rockstar @josh is. Wanted to make sure that he knows we appreciate him!!

[josh]

Thank you sir! People's interesting problems are a big source of personal education for me...

If you're actually using the macro above, there's actually a more updated version over in the Macro Library.

[Glenn Schroeder]

Thank you sir! People's interesting problems are a big source of personal education for me...

If you're actually using the macro above, there's actually a more updated version over in the Macro Library.

Same here. I can't count the times I've learned something new while trying to solve someone else's problem.

[TTevolve]

or how many times there is a problem that I don't even know I am having...lol

It's always awesome to see how others are using the software to do things. It's good to see other ways to approach things.